''Nelly, I Am Heathcliff!": the Problem of 'Identification'' in Wuthering Heights

''Nelly, I am Heathcliff!": The Problem of 'Identification'' in Wuthering Heights GRAEME TYTLER N A BBC television series broadcast during November I and December 2003 under the title "The Big Read," Wuthering Heights was voted twenty-first of the hundred best-loved works of fiction in Britain. This relatively high po- sition may have been determined in part by the fact that Al- istair McGowan, the apologist for the novel, based his defense of it almost entirely on the love relationship between Cath- erine and Heathcliff, some of the renowmed moments of which were made palpably dramatic for the televiewer by the aid of actors. Since McCowan, like the twenty other celeb- rities also chosen to lecture on their favorite books, was speak- ing as an amateur, it was perhaps not surprising that he should have said what seems to have been said countless times before, namely, that Catherine and Heathcliff are the greatest lovers in the history of the novel, and their speeches among the finest in all literature. And while McCowan was, to be sure, nothing loath to acknowledge the grim and tragic as- pects of their relationship, there can be little doubt that his attitude toward Catherine and Heathcliff as lovers was fundamentally affirmative, refiecting as it probably did the sen- timents of most readers who voted for the book, as well as representing views held down the years by many a literary scholar, most notably when, for example, he referred to Cath- erine's well-known exclamation, "Nelly, I am, Heathcliff!" as a manifestation of perfect love. But although some Bronte scholars have interpreted that somewhat cryptic utterance in much the same fashion, others have used it as a basis for re-assessing, not to say impugning. (167) 168 THE MIDWEST QUARTERLY a relationship that has all too often been considered almost sacrosanct. Thus Elizabeth Napier has interpreted Cathe- rine's words as part of a specific psychological pattern in that they bespeak a certain reluctance on the heroine's part to accept the 'otherness' of HeathclifPs identity. Bernard Paris has gone further by describing Catherine and HeathclifPs relationship as "a mutual dependency," wherehy hoth charac- ters lack "a sense of themselves as autonomous heings with separate identities" (108). Such an opinion is difficult to gain- say on purely psychological grounds, and deserves to be kept in mind wdth respect to Emily Bronte's treatment of love. Yet a much more important reason for taking that opinion seriously is that it happens to have a certain bearing on a central theme in Wuthering Heights, that is, the way in which 'identification,' as seen in the tendency not only to identify with someone, but to read their mind, predict their behavior or situation, ascribe motives to their actions, judge their char- acter, and so on, plays its part for good or ill in almost all personal relationships delineated in the novel. In view of the favor that Catherine and Heathcliff continue to enjoy as romantic figures among all kinds of readership, it might, then, be deemed almost heretical to suggest that Cath- erine's ways of identifying with Heathcliff—"I am Heathcliff (82), "he's more myself than I am" (80), "his [soul] and mine are the same" (80), etc.—ought to be regarded with some wariness. Yet such a suggestion is by no means out of place once we have reminded ourselves first of all that those poetic phrases are voiced in the very context in which Catherine has been consulting Nelly Dean about whether or not to marry Edgar Linton. Moreover, by that time we have also become aware that, since her return from her five-week stay at Thrushcross Crange, Catherine has been quite inconsiderate, even callous, in her behavior toward Heathcliff and generally unresponsive to his evident affection for her. In any case, it is not at all certain that Catherine's statements ahout him are necessarily expressions of erotic love; on the contrary, the fact that she supposes that Heathcliff "does not know what being IDENTIFICATION 169 in love is" (81) would suggest that she was simply anxious to prolong their childhood relationship. Such claims as Cathe- rine makes about her love for Heathcliff seem to be rather evasive, mainly because they are couched not in plain lan- guage but in extravagant metaphors. It is also odd to be told that, in her fear that Heathcliff may have overheard her dialogue with Nelly Dean, Catherine discovers that she has "forgotten" (83) what she has just been saying about him, thereby making us wonder whether any of" her utterances about him should be taken seriously. That such forgetfulness seems to be characteristic of Catherine is later confirmed when, in an attempt to discourage Isabella's amorous interest in Heathcliff, she describes him to her as "an unreclaimed creature, without refinement—^without cultivation" and as "a fierce, pitiless, wolfish man" (102), having apparently over- looked that only a short time ago she had told Edgar that the newly-returned Heathcliff was now "worthy of any one's re- gard" and that it would "honour the first gentleman in the country to be his friend" (98). Just as Catherine's 'identification' with Heathcliff may, then, be already turned on its head for reasons given above, so too may Heathcliff s 'identification' with Catherine, albeit for partly different reasons. Although Heathcliff makes specific identificatory references to Catherine as "my life" (158) and "my soul" (167) during their final meeting and immedi- ately after her death, the essence of his 'identification' with her is perhaps best seen in his long dialogue with Nelly T)ean in Chapter 14. The fact that during the dialogue Heathcliff defiantly asserts his love for Catherine while intermittently vilifying and humiliating his bride Isabella in the presence of a servant is surely enough for us already to cast doubt on the value of that love. This doubt is compounded by Heathcliff s threatening behavior toward Nelly Dean and, more particu- larly, by his refusal to heed her reiterated warning to him about the dangers to Catherine's health of his proposed visit—a warning that will appear to have been later vindicated by the latter's untimely death. Heathchffs determination to 170 THE MIDWEST QUARTERLY see Catherine at all costs seems to he principally due to Nelly's assertion that her mistress has "nearly forgotten" (149) him; indeed, it is those very words that evidently set him on his quest to prove not only that Catherine has not forgotten him, but that she loves him far better than she has ever loved Edgar. In this connection, it is noteworthy that when, amid his (unfounded) claim of being superior to Edgar in the capacity to love Catherine, Heathcliff sarcastically dis- misses Edgar's love for her as a mere expression of "duty" and "humanity," he seems unaware that those two words have only moments earlier constituted part of Nelly's presumptu- ous prediction that Edgar will "only sustain his affection here- after [for Catherine] by the remembrance of what she once was, by common humanity, and a sense of duty!" (148). More important for our purposes, however, is HeathclifPs contention that Catherine's love for him is far greater than her love for Edgar, that Edgar is, as he says, "scarcely a de- gree dearer to her than her dog, or her horse" (149). Such arguments have been takeri on trust by many readers of Wuthering Heights and commonly found acceptable. But how valid are they? It is true that Catherine has welcomed Heathcliff on his return from abroad as though he were some long-lost lover, that his three-year absence has caused her great suffering, and that she admires in him the manliness she (mistakenly) supposes to be lacking in Edgar. Yet, as has already been suggested above, we cannot be quite sure about the nature of Catherine's love for Heathcliff, nor for that mat- ter can we tell whether Catherine loves him in the way he thinks she does. In any case, HeathclifPs debunking of Cath- erine's love for Edgar seems to be somewhat vitiated by Is- abella's allegation that her brother and sister-in-law are "as fond of each other as any two people can be" (149), as it is also by Nelly Dean's following statement as based on her own assessment of the same relationship while Heathcliff was still absent: "I believe I may assert that [Catherine and Edgar] were really in possession of deep and growing happiness" (92). Again, we may well wonder why, despite HeathclifPs IDENTIFICATION 171 belittling of the quality of her love for Edgar, Catherine should have been heard childishly fretting (presumably) over Edgar's apparent indifference to her during her seclusion in her bedroom, and even gone so far as to imagine his relief at her death, adding: "he'd be glad—he does not love me at all—he would never miss me" (120). These are hardly the words of someone fundamentally indifferent to her husband, let alone constantly preoccupied with Heathcliff. Eurther- more, as we gather from Nelly's accounts, Catherine neither asks for Heathcliff nor mentions his name during her final illness or just before her death. No doubt, the reason Heath- cliff gives Nelly for Catherine's silences, namely, that "she thinks you are all spies for her husband" (153) sounds plausible enough to the reader—as plausible, indeed, as when, for example, he says: "I guess, by' her silence, as much as anything, what she feels—" (153) or "It is a foolish story to assert that Catherine could not bear to see me.

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